This volume brings to an end the transcription and historical description of items from the Court Entertainment Music of the Tang found in two collections of zither and lute scores from the end of the twelfth century. They are from two mode-key groups: twenty-three in the mode-key Ichikotsu-cho and eight in Sada-cho. Of particular interest is a tune that fits a birthplace-ode by the Taizong Emperor, composed in 632, and also music for a collective spear-throwing exercise and a piece perhaps imitating calls between sexual partners in a flock of geese. Important appendices discuss stylistic differences between music of the Tang and imitative Japanese compositions; relationships between Tang compositions with noble and military associations; and evidence of inter-relatedness between movements in suites from the Tang.

The series of volumes of Music from the Tang Court considers a repertory of music at least 1400 years old. During the two centuries before 841 the Japanese Court borrowed a large amount of secular entertainment music from China. This 'Tang Music' (Togaku) survives in Japan in a substantial body of manuscripts, but is transformed in character in contemporary performance. This edition transcribes and comments on the music as it survives in its earliest sources. This process has revealed surprising evidence for ancient interconnections in Asian musics, and the essays in this seventh volume present aspects of this research to date. They provide evidence, for example, of music in a scale of four notes only from Bali and from Ancient China, as well as, most significantly, for the transportation from the Tang capital to Japan of 'several tens of scrolls of music in tablature'.